Quotes of the day

Goldman knows, even though it's a mighty company, it survives at the sufferance of the U.S. government.--Steve Forbes

Thanks for the sh…ty service, negative tip – you owe me 25 cents.--Bill Gross, to a waitress

Police Chief Jack Harris said he will not be stepping down amid controversy over his department’s reported kidnapping statistics for 2008. ... The controversy stems from allegations that the Phoenix Police Department misrepresented the number of kidnappings in the city. The department received $1.7 million in federal grant money to deal with the problem.--Catherine Holland

There’s no way you can run the kind of deficits we’re running—and this is true around the world—without it being enormously inflationary. No politician is going to come out and say we’re really going to solve this by making our money worth less. It would be suicide to do this (but) that’s the practical effect of the policies that are being followed now.--Warren Buffett

Massachusetts, "Romney Care" is nothing but ObamaCare in that state. If the federal government was not bailing out Massachusetts then it would have failed in that state I believe. It was just disastrous. We need to stop it.--Representative Paul Broun

Earlier this week, I wrote a short post at my personal blog drawing a parallel between the American left's new-found, pro-union, placard-waving enthusiasm and the tea-party movement. Reading the comments, the comparison seems to have pleased no one. But I'm especially interested in the reaction from the left. The tea-party movement, you see, is an "astroturf" movement, financed by billionaire puppetmasters, fueled by hatred, agitating for rank injustice. The labour movement, on the other hand, is the real deal: a bottom-up coalition of working Americans courageously standing up against the thuggery of bought-and-paid-for Republicans and their shamelessly insatiable plutocrat bosses. This zanily Manichean way of characterising the situation I think rather confirms my suspicion that the equivalence I drew is sound.--Will Wilkinson

I love the performance of a craft, whether it is modest or mean-spirited, yet I walk away when discussions of it begin - as if one should ask a gravedigger what brand of shovel he uses or whether he prefers to work at noon or in moonlight. I am interested only in the care taken, and those secret rehearsals behind it. Even if I do not understand fully what is taking place.—-Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero

The rewards for the dumb staying in school or working long hours are considerably smaller, so they rationally choose more leisure time. What’s more, with the economy geared in ways that limit their opportunities, attaching themselves to a smart mate is one of the few tactics for economic advancement. So dumb chicks have both greater opportunities and greater incentives to try harder to date smart men than smart women do.--John Carney